The use of interactive voice response systems for call management, routing and distribution has become ubiquitous. Such systems enable a caller to navigate a series of menus to reach the endpoint they want, for example, sales, customer service, make an appointment, check an account balance or billing date, etc. However, it can be frustrating for a caller to call a number that they call fairly often and have the interactive voice response (“IVR”) system notify the caller that “some of our selections may have changed.” Since the caller does not know whether, in fact, the selections that will take them where they want to be connected have changed since their last call, they are either forced to waste time going through the voice or key-press prompts to get to where they want or, if they have memorized the sequence to get them where they want, try the sequence only to find that the prompts have actually changed and so they did not end up where they wanted.
Still further, for systems that deal with people's personal information, for example, medical offices, banks, brokerages, etc., an IVR may initially prompt the caller for identification information even though the caller is not interested in anything where that information would be needed. Moreover, in some cases, even if the caller initially inputs their information because it will be needed, they may be required to provide it again at the location where they end up.
In most cases, the only other way that someone can bypass the above problem with most IVR systems is to, for example, repeatedly press “0” or say “operator” or the like so that they get connected to a person and then can ask to be directly connected to where they want. However, that approach can actually take more time than navigating the IVR prompts and, in some cases, the transfer by the person merely places the caller back into the IVR system.
Thus, there is an ongoing technological problem involving IVR technology involved in managing and routing calls. Specifically, there is a problem with how such systems handle certain calls and significant room for improvement in the operation of such systems, particularly with respect to systems where the same callers may call multiple times over some time span, in some cases for the same reason and in other cases for different reasons.